Has Obama earned that Nobel Peace Prize?

For many people, it is hard to remember that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2009. Oh, did I just jog your memory? Don’t worry, you are not alone.

Even the president himself joked earlier this year about not really knowing why he received the prestigious award, as reported in the Washington Post.

But for some, Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is no joking matter, and many do not believe he deserves it, especially in light of what he’s done since he received it.

In an article in the Rutherford Institute, libertarian civil liberties attorney and commentator John W. Whitehead argues that between the drone strikes and the assertion that any American citizen could potentially be a terrorist, Obama has done absolutely nothing to promote world peace.

Whitehead declares that the Nobel Peace Prize winner has become the “head of a worldwide assassination program” who “believes he has the absolute right to kill you based upon secret ‘evidence’ that you might be a terrorist.”

Even though Paul withdrew the filibuster after 12 hours, his message made clear that Americans’ civil liberties are endangered by the “transformative potential of drones,” and that they “will destroy the very American Constitution we are trying to preserve,” says Ahsanuddin.

In an article in the Atlantic back in September, Conor Friedersdorf says that the way John Brennan describes the drone strikes as surgically precise displays a Orwellian “triumph of propaganda.”

While a surgeon makes precise cuts with his scalpel, a drone strike can wipe out dozens of people nearby the intended target. So, the word “surgical” really belongs nowhere near the words “drone strike,” says Friedersdorf.

Robert Taylor reports in PolicyMic how Obama’s administration substantially downplayed the number of civilian deaths due to the drone strikes, with some estimates equaling 50 civilians killed for every one suspected terrorist.

“The Obama-CIA program is the perfect example of government secrecy, lawlessness, and the inevitable next step in the U.S. government’s long tradition of claiming the right to intervene military (sic) anywhere and everywhere it please,” says Taylor.

What do you make of all this? Do you favor drone strikes against suspected terrorists abroad? On American soil? Do you think the government needs to treat American citizens differently from non-citizens when conducting drone strikes overseas? And what about that peace prize? Has Obama earned it, or not?

11 Responses

I’m still trying to figure out how one defends themselves against a fanatic religious sect, that has no actual center, has declared all-out war against us (and let’s face it, for some historical reasons that have some merit), who, in the end, represent the greatest threat to free thought since The Inquisition. When they are acting in the real world, and in the made-up realm of the imaginary after-life (the carrot used by them to get people to kill themselves, as they kill others), the battleground becomes totally confused and needs to be redefined to reflect a threat that, because of the fixated nature of religious absolutist zeal, may not be able to be contained using traditional methods.

Can someone explain for me the moral distinction between A) shooting someone, B) bombing someone with a jet, and C) bombing someone with a drone? Once you can, I will see the whole drone thing in a different light.

As for the Peace Prize, prior winners include Arafat, Kissinger and Sadat. Enough said.

I have never seen a country with so many lists including a kill list. It must be because all of the different agencies that maintain lists. That sort of puts a damper on the peace thing. Seriously up to this point I am not very impressed with foreign policy and stance. We are well on our way as being perceived as a rather evil empire. This, as the actual truth about our wars and spying on everybody in the world will continue to emerge. I think many in the world feel as if Obama devalued the worth of a Nobel Peace Prize. Then again he is cammander of the largest military the world has ever known and the Killer CIA.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee bestowed the award on Obama in anticipation of him rejecting the policies of his predecessor. The fact that Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, exponentially increased drone assassinations and bombed Libya in support of securing European oil supplies independent of Suez Canal transit, has rendered that Nobel medallion to that which is suitable for only a trash bin. There were many worthy candidates with proven lifelong results in pursuit of peace, but the stewards of Alfred Nobel’s legacy saw fit to reward a charlatan who delivered nothing more than slogan of hope and change.

The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded annually by a group of Swedish leftists, has been a joke for many years. Giving it to Obama in 2009, when he’d done absolutely nothing to justify it, is just the exclamation point at the end of that joke.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been transformed from a prestigous award granted to those who worked hard for peace to one granted to persons whose actions please the political left, and finally to persons (Obama)whose future actions the left hopes will please them. For many of us the Nobel Peace Prize has become an absolute farce.

The prize committe embarrassed itself, and removed any sense of logic when it for no apparent reason, awarded an individual who had actually done nothing whatsoever to earn such an award.it was clearly just an activist organization attempting to lift one of its own to prominence.